19/06/2026
It was once one of the most beautiful buildings in Malta. The Royal Opera House, It-Teatru Rjal, stood at the entrance to Valletta, a grand neoclassical theatre designed by Edward Middleton Barry, the architect of London’s Covent Garden. It opened in 1866 with Bellini’s I Puritani, and for decades it was the glittering heart of Maltese cultural life, hosting the great operas of Verdi, Bellini and Massenet and famous international singers. But its story was a tragic one. In 1873, just seven years after it opened, a fire gutted its interior. It was painstakingly restored and reopened in 1877 with Verdi’s Aida. Then, on the evening of the 7th of April 1942, at the height of the wartime siege of Malta, a German air raid scored a direct hit and reduced the opera house to ruins. It was never rebuilt. For seventy years its roofless shell and broken columns stood at the gateway of Valletta, a haunting reminder of the war. Only in 2013 was the site finally redeveloped, when the architect Renzo Piano controversially chose to leave the ruins in place and build a modern open-air theatre within them: the Pjazza Teatru Rjal. This is the story of Malta’s lost opera house, how it rose, how it burned, how it fell, and how its ruins found a second life.
https://hubs.la/Q04m0x7m0
